Huntingdon and William of Poictiers. Then the whole army marched from Hastings to the hill called Telham, whence they could see the camp of Harold; and then the Norman knights put on their coats of mail, assumed their heavy helmets, and exchanged their light hackneys for their great barbed battle-horses. William, probably in his haste, put on his chain shirt with the back to the front.

"A good sign and a lucky one," said he, laughingly, as he reversed it; "a duke shall this day be turned into a king."

The Saxons wore

and firmness to their footing. their hair and beard long and flowing; the Normans had the former shorn and the latter closely shaven.

There was a tribe in Wales then named the Venta, who excelled with the bow, and that weapon is frequently referred to in the poems of Ossian; but save during the Heptarchy, when we read that Offrid, son of the King of Northumbria, was killed by an arrow in a battle fought in 633, near Hatfield, in Yorkshire, little relating to the bow appears in the Saxon annals. (See Moseley on "Archery.") Harold drew up his army in order of battle on a

deep trenches, intending to sustain an attack, but avoid, if possible, the heavy-armed cavalry, a force in which he was inferior. In rear of the trenches were ballista and other engines for casting stones.

William rode a Spanish barb; he wore a surcoat above his chain-mail, and a case of holy relics at his neck, and carried in his right hand a truncheon of steel. By his side rode Toustain the Fair, bearing the beautiful banner which Pope Alexander had blessed-a perilous honour, which two barons had declined.

The formation of the Norman army was altogether peculiar. It was drawn up in three long lines. The first, formed of archers and light infantry, was led by Roger de Montgomerie; the second, composed of heavily-mailed men-at-arms, was led by Martel; and the third, led by William in person, was entirely composed of cavalry-knights with their squires, and yeomen-and its length was so vast that it far outflanked the first two. Splinted armour had not been introduced; the Normans therefore wore tippets and shirts or hauberks of minute iron rings, with high saddles and steel frontlets for their horses. There was a strong resemblance between the military equipments of the Normans and Saxons at this period; and though the latter wore tunics of iron rings, much of their armour was composed of leather only, and consisted of overlapping flaps, generally stained of different colours, and shaped like scales or leaves. It was called corium by the writers in the succeeding century, and corietum in the Norman law. In addition to the ringed byrne, the Saxons had a kind of mail composed of iron bosses sewn on leather, and the short mantle added grace to the figure; while the cross-gartering, composed of thong, gave a lightness

In the centre was his royal standard, depicting a warrior in the act of fighting, worked in gold and studded with precious stones, perhaps the handiwork of his queen, Algitha, or of Swans-hause ("Edith with the Swan's Throat"), whom Harold loved so well when he was Earl of the East Angles. Besides this, the English had one other great banner, charged with the golden dragon of Wessex.

The Kentish men formed his first line, together with the Londoners, who guarded the standard. All these men were mailed, and armed with javelins, swords, and heavy battle-axes; but the other troops who came from the south and east had no iron defensive armour-few had swords, bows, or axes, and many had pikes, pitchforks, or anything they could get wherewith to arm them. Harold dismounted, with his brothers Leofwin and Gurth; and there on foot, with his battle-axe in his hand, stood the last Saxon king of England, prepared to conquer or die, beside his standard, on the very spot where the high altar of the future minster rose, and where then there was amid the waste nought but "the hoar apple tree."

Precisely at nine o'clock the whole Norman army began to move forward in three great lines, all marching in unison, and loading the air with the hymn or battle-song of Roland, the peer of Charlemagne, who fell at Roncesvalles. This song was led by Taillefer, or "Cut-iron," the minstrel, who rode in front, tossing up his sword and catching it. With the morning sun shining on the arms and armour of 60,000 men, those lines came down the green slope, their parti-coloured pennons and banners waving, their grey but glittering shirts of mail, and their gaudy surcoats of silk or fine linen, embroidered or painted with the heraldic cognisances which from that day forward were to be those of the future aristocracy of England.

Hastings.]

9

"Christ's Rood! The Holy Rood!" was the incessant battle-cry of the Saxons, who shot their arrows thick and fast, hurled their javelins, and hewed with their axes, cleaving shields of iron and hauberks of tempered steel asunder. Many fell fast before and behind that formidable palisade, and the Norman writers tell us how dreadful the fight was, "and how the English axe in the hand of King Harold, or any other strong man, cut down the horse and his rider by a single blow."

Harold and his brother fought there among the foremost. He lost an eye by an arrow, and though consequently half blind and in agony, he still continued to fight; while William ordered his archers to press forward, and "instead of shooting with level aim" to discharge their arrows with a curve, so that they might assail the English rear. Horse and foot, knight and pikemen, now poured like a living tempest sheathed in iron on the Saxon trenches.

"Our Lady of help! God be our help!" was the cry; but so terrible was the execution done by the English battle-axes, mauls, and spears, that they were driven down into the ravine between the two hills, where men and horses, killed, wounded, or dying, rolled over each other pell-mell, and many men were even smothered in their armour and their own blood. William had three horses killed under him, and on the third occasion a cry arose that he was slain. On this he remounted and rode along the now shattered line, with his helmet in his hand, that all might see him, exclaiming, "I am here-look at me! I live, and, by God's help, shall conquer!"

Aided by his half-brother, Bishop Odo, he rallied his troops, and once more they returned to the attack with greater fury; the palisades were torn up and an entrance forced for the living mass of men and horses that poured through. The tide of battle began then to verge from the hill to the heath near the village of Epiton, northward of the present town of Hastings. In dense masses, however, and fighting desperately, the English threw themselves around the standard, and Duke William hewed his way towards it, intent on meeting Harold face to face-a result he never achieved; though Earl Gurth, who fought near his royal brother, hurled a spear at

Twenty knights now swore to take the standard or die in the attempt, just as Harold fell disabled and faint with loss of blood. Ten fell; among these was Robert Fitz-Ernest, whose skull was cloven by a battle-axe at the moment his hand was on the pole. However, the survivors succeeded in tearing down the English standard, and planting in its stead the consecrated one which had come from Rome. The golden dragon, "that ancient ensign, which had shone over so many battle-fields, was never again borne before a true English king," as it, too, fell into the hands of the Normans. Then four knights, one of whom was Count Eustace of Boulogne, rushed upon Harold as he lay dying. They recognised him by his rich armour and royal insignia, and barbarously killed him with many wounds, sorely mangling his body.

Still the fight was not done, nor was it over til the setting of the sun, for the housecarles and other picked Saxon warriors fought with the courage that is born of vengeance and despair, in deep and miry ground, broken and disordered, against the mighty force of the Norman chivalry. No prisoners were taken, neither did any Saxon take flight till darkness came on, and by that time there lay on the field of Hastings 15,000 Norman dead, and a still greater number of the vanquished, stated at "threescore thousand Englishmen," which is certainly an e ageration of the truth.

In their riotous joy at having obtained such a victory, when weary of tracking the fugitives by the light of the moon, the Normans exultingly caracoled their horses over the bodies; while William, ordering a place to be cleared of them, pitched a great pavilion, wherein he feasted the principal nobles and knights of his army.

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Next day he permitted the bodies of the English to be carried away for burial; and though Hume records that he generously restored the dead body of Harold without ransom to his mother, Gurtha, now know that though she offered him "Harold's weight in gold, that she might have his body to bury at the Holy Rood of Waltham," William of Poictiers, a trustworthy writer, distinctly records that the Conqueror gave a stern refusal, and ordered it to be buried under a heap of stones on the beach, adding, with a sneer which must have been bitter to every English heart, "He guarded the coast while he was alive, let him thus continue to guard it after death."